


lurched like a stray

by worry



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Stream of Consciousness, warning: incomprehensible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 21:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14121354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worry/pseuds/worry
Summary: The light of the crystalis so bright but it is not anything like the Doctor.[Stream of consciousness throughout the Black Guardian Trilogy.]





	lurched like a stray

**Author's Note:**

> one day i will write something a) comprehensible and b) interesting that is c) nothing like anything i've ever written before. today is not that day!
> 
> alternative title: [guess that's how i'm built](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13289136) but messier

Then the sun comes out, shining rays of gold and warmth on Turlough’s skin, making a shadow of him on the ground and it brushes through his hair it drains the color from him

 

he is all

 

red

 

the color of anger and violence, the color of  _ STOP!  _ and  _ NO,  _ the color of every word that has never been used against him oh he dreams of  _ STOP  _ and  _ NO  _ and he

 

the

 

the sun comes out and he watches the second Turlough on the grass, the sight of this Turlough moving along with him, his body doubled and he could dance here, under this heat, he  _ wants  _ to be on the sun and he wants to be burning and the sun walks into a spaceship and says  _ who . are. you.  _ and he wants to be on top of the sun and he wants to burn a little bit faster, just a little bit faster. He could burn here against the fire of centuries and the people on this planet would  _ die  _ without this warmth the big, big fire in the sky -

 

\- and they should -

 

\- and they  _ should - _

 

\- but Turlough oh. Oh . He is already so cold. It means nothing. It’s like if you took a deer and killed it because it was pretty, because it represented innocence and innocence is just

 

unattainable, it’s like picking up an insect and saying  _ you are every person on this planet  _ and then crushing it under the heel of your shoes imagining some kind of “magic” but when it comes down to it 

 

when you pull off the skin, the tissue

 

when you touch the boneframe of the situation

 

he is a coward

 

he knows he is a coward

 

he will never

 

be worthy of 

  
  
  


The Doctor represents prison and the breaking-of chains, freedom and punishment all in one box, close it, burn it, open it, put your hands

 

in the ashes and love love love love everything that has been damaged at your hands, the hands of Turlough. Of course these hands cannot be touched back, that is the dorsum of the universe, of everything that will be. But Turlough is 

 

a coward and would not touch the Doctor nor will the Doctor ever touch him he is tied up and he is tied up and the Doctor -

 

\- the Doctor -

 

\- the Doctor can free him and the Doctor can starve him and run his fingers across Turlough’s bones 

 

_ and he still would not deserve it, he _

 

imagines himself as strong holding weapons again and weapons and weapons and when he presses the gun against the Doctor’s chest he

 

there was a c r a s h and he

 

woke up with a headache and a mission he isn’t like this he is not like this ;

 

and he 

 

when he presses his weaponry against the skin of the Doctor he does not feel any pain instead he feels

 

bright, and free ,,, and safe

 

with the Doctor shoved against the TARDIS wall and how it is almost sensual - he is going to kill the Doctor right here with his bad damaged hands and against the Doctor’s chest could be a gun  _ pulsing  _ or it could be Turlough’s mouth and  _ oh! _

 

There is no difference, no sep _ arating | li _ ne between Vislor Turlough and something wild  _ \-  _ something calculated, an object with its own mind, a cold body

 

_ ( i will not hurt you  _ but the scorpion, of course, stings anyway - stinging is part of its nature, and 

 

ruin is part of Turlough’s, his skin small shards of metal clinging to the meat of his muscles )

 

Turlough’s nature is this: 

 

The grass outside of Brendon Boys’ School is always green; in other areas sometimes the grass turns a slight yellow, or worse - dead - but it is always a deep green outside of the school, and it always has a fresh scent; he does not mind the nature of the place, the watercolored sky & how it melts orange-pink-purple in the evenings, little spirals of color in this world & Turlough can see it all, deep and vivid. Mirrored in his eyes, there lies the shine of the sun in the morning & the silver light reflecting through his window in the nighttime, pulling him by the wrists through each day - the luminescence, though, acts bladelike, carves into him a reminder that he is stuck here, chained to a desk by the stars. Every day the light bleeds through the armor and then he 

 

is eating the light, tearing apart purity with the sharpness of his inner mouth his insides  _ oh he remembers _

  
  


_ ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate  _

_ that Time will come and take my love away.  _

_   this thought is as a death which cannot choose _

_   but weep to have that which it fears to lose _

 

He is so angry, wants to claw himself a path to the celestial  _ brass eternal slave to mortal rage  _ and he remembers history as it moves against his shoulders and the words he wrote against paper about other words and other loves  _ the rich proud cost of outworn buried age hhhhhhhhh h h h h h h  _

 

he hates these words

 

they

 

are too familiar

 

to this mind, to this loneliness & anger & encompassing pain

 

;

 

the Doctor

 

wants to claw Turlough a path to redemption if there is such a thing as re demp tion if there is such an attainable thing as good gooood the word like all words feels like a crack of the bone a fracture a small but eviscerating kind of

 

love

 

the Doctor

 

he does, but shouldn’t

 

_ Doctor may I join you  _ and there is a paradox of time he could let the universe break up into shards and then he would ! be ! free ! but he shouldn’t, instead he takes the Doctor’s hand  _ I think you already have  _ and there is a light in the Doctor’s

 

eyes (eyes)

 

and the Doctor’s face (his  _ face _ )

 

that Turlough does 

 

not

 

(red, NO)

 

want to 

 

want

 

he does not want 

 

but he wants it

 

the light ,

 

he does not want to extinguish this light, wants to instead drown himself in it

 

,

 

and then there is sickness

 

they are so sick, they are

 

everything wrapped around them is sick curled around their bodies and he should feel sad he should feel pity he Should Do So Many Things bhhhhhh but hhhe can only think of thhhe Doctor and the Guardiand the crystal the crystal and the light of the crystal

 

is so bright but it is not anything like the Doctor

 

she leave s and he cannot understand why 

 

to save

 

to Save

 

to help

 

?

 

How can someone

 

be capable of so much good

 

Nyssa is good Tegan is good & the Doctor loves  _ good  _ people if

 

he knew why Turlough was here he would bite into

 

not Turlough he would bite and he would

 

be so 

 

a n g r y

 

.

 

He is not the kind of angry that Turlough is ; somehow he is pure even in his anger, his would-be anger, the future and the past he has lived So Long So Long So Long he has

 

to feel

 

_ everything _

 

he has to know it all

 

what it feels like to love and desire and what it feels like to burn yourself with your own hurting

 

Then they are on a ship and Turlough is the water, is the space around them & the way the boat turns turbulent

 

and the Doctor says, so firmly that Turlough feels a painting in his chest and in his mind, colors of everything he has ever

 

loved, the sky and blood and freedom, a painting of nothing - just incomprehensible strokes, the way the Doctor makes him feel (like holding a rock, a pretty gift for a skull, a pretty way to die) the way the Doctor makes him feel is

 

firmly, he says, so firmly,

 

“We stay.”

 

He will stay with the Doctor.

 

He will.

 

_ The Earth can have but Earth— _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> comments + kudos appreciated
> 
> i don't know why i feel like turlough + shakespeare goes well together; he canonically hates shakespeare, but why?


End file.
